Ready (as we'll ever be) To Paint

We're finally ready to paint BB. Craig's brother is coming on Saturday to show off his mad painting skills. It is very exciting! I never cease to be amazed by the beauty of a fresh coat of paint.

One of the obstacles to our painting adventures moving forward has been the red bus (Doris) who has been taking up half of our garage. (Yes, we're painting the car in our garage and we're aware of the inherent dangers of this situation, but thanks for worrying about us.) Doris, as you may recall has only a front axle. Makes for difficulty of transportation. As it turned out, James--the guy who towed Doris to our house to begin with--is a VW guy and wanted to take Doris, so thankfully, he came and picked her up tonight. I didn't manage to find the camera until she was almost on the tow truck, but the video gives you the general idea.

Here's BB primed and ready to go. Well, she's not so much ready to go in the traditional sense--she won't actually go anywhere without an external force. We did have a really good time pushing her out into the street for washing. As Craig sat in the driver's seat and I started to push her down our sloped driveway, we really were not sure just how much it was going to take to stop BB from running up into our neighbor's house. Fortunately she didn't get too much speed built up. Brakes are overrated.

For the record--the areas that look rusted in this photo are actually red primer...yeah, we're wondering how well white paint will cover the red primer too.

Bluebell went to the shop shortly after my last post as Craig and I had attempted to do a little mechanic work and in order to avoid doing serious damage, we towed her to our mechanic. I don't even want to talk about the bill. No, seriously, it was BAD. Long story short--our mechanic did a little rebuild of Bluebell's engine using some of the components from BB's engine. I guess the good news is that since we got her back yesterday, she's been running great. She'd better continue that way for a while because the coffers have run D-R-Y.

One bad engine, one old Subaru and one too many cars in the driveway.

Good news--we finally have a name for the blue bus. We're calling it BB. The naming process was accelerated out of necessity by the fact that we now have--yes, count them--two blue buses.
Intoducing BlueBell:




Craig sends me a craigslist posting for a car approximately once per every 1.65 days, so it was no surprise to me when the morning after we got the news about BB's engine I got the craigslist link for BlueBell. She is a 1970 deluxe transporter--mostly original, right down to the radio, and gas
cap.

We took BB's engine down to our mechanic to get his opinion on the motor's condition--long story short--he informed us that the engine was completely shot. This was a posibility that we were somewhat expecting, but not fully prepared to deal with. Our greatest hope was that there were simply missing hoses...and our realistic hope was that the case would be solid and everything would be rebuildable, but as it is, the case is cracked, pistons are shrunk, and we're back to square one.

Ultimately we aren't sure what our plans are at this point other than we are still going to fix BB up, but we don't know what to do about the large cavity in the engine compartment. We're painting her on July 11th. We're about ready to get rid of the red bus frame (which my grandma has lovingly named "Doris"). We are having a really good time having four VWs at our house, but I think our neighbors are getting concerned. We've got the Subaru on craigslist, but apparently no one is interested in an old--but not old enough to be cool--Subaru with over 200k miles...should have seen that one coming.

Oh, AND, the extra bonus to buying BlueBell is that her previous owner is a painter and we had been wanting to paint our house. Thank you Lawrence for the beautiful bus and the beautiful paint job--seriously, it is gorgeous.

Foresight Required.

I had a post typed up in Word but my compy is being a dork and when I try to paste the text I had typed, Explorer shut itself down...repeatedly. So, instead of the post I had planned for tonight, I thought I'd share one of my favorite VW ads. I have this one saved as my desktop wallpaper. Its irony makes me chuckle every time I go to update my VW spending spreadsheet. I always wonder whether, when VW began producing these cars, they had ANY clue as to the kind of insanity they had started.

Bright, Bright Sunshiny Dash.

On Monday night, Craig started removing the dash from the blue bus in preparation for painting. We had planned to remove it and then replace it with the one from the ’72, which looked much nicer. Craig had suggested using ArmorAll to see if the dash would clean up, but I was confident that we should bail. We were hesitant to use the newer dash because we are trying to maintain originality where it is feasible, but it seemed like the best thing to do. On my way home on Tuesday, I called Craig and he said he had a surprise, so I thought for sure he had finished removal of the dash. When I got home, I was incredibly and pleasantly surprised to find that he had cleaned up the dash in the ’68 and it looks freaking fantastic. I was totally floored. (Okay, we're still missing the radio, but you know, minor detail, right?)

We are headed up to Washington tonight to go to the Sasquatch Music Festival! We are traveling by way of Portland which is completely unnecessary, but we like Portland not to mention that we’ve run out of books to read since our last visit to Powell’s. We haven’t been driving Copper much lately and we are so excited to get back in her and spend some time re-centering ourselves VW style. Farfegnugan baby.

Now that's a little thing we like to call progress.

RustMort—my new best friend. Do, however, bear in mind that RustMort WILL eat your skin. Quite literally. I have been wearing gloves, but managed to get a few drops on my legs and ignored the mild burning sensation until I looked down and found a number of “little volcanoes of pain” (that was Craig’s description). Basically the Phosphoric acid ate a couple of layers of skin. Also, there’s one on my neck. That one looks like much like a hickey. How fun.

Craig snapped these photos this morning and when I saw this one of the roof, it made me almost giddy. I don’t have a “before” of the roof, but if I did, you’d say “its a miracle! Where’d the rust go”.
We got the engine out via our special mix of: The Idiots Guide, Tom Wilson’s book on rebuilding, a little creativity, four jacks, and Craig’s muscles (oo la la).
Also, we are planning to paint the bus yellow and were pleased to find a little spot of yellow inside the gas door, so in order to make ourselves feel more like purists, we’ve originated a legend about how the bus left the VW factory white, but Westfalia painted it yellow. This would mean that yellow was basically its original color. Yep…that’s how it happened.

Why take the engine when you can have the whole thing?

Here’s a lesson in overcoming objections.

If you can’t find a VW bus—make one out of a Subaru.

You've got to admit that they're kind of cute.

Photos courtesy of "Michael Hansen's Hikes" on Flickr.

Nature is so patient.

It isn't huge progress, but the floor is looking slightly better. It is amazing how much time I have spent on this floor. I keep having to remind myself that the rust took years to get there and I'm hoping to make it go away in hours.